Throughout the United States, the legalization of marijuana is being debated by the public and in government forums. Although still criminalized at the federal level, decriminalization at the state level has received national attention because several states have enacted marijuana legislation for medical and recreational purposes. As of 2013, 18 states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation allowing for the use of medical marijuana, which includes many edible products, and sales are projected to more than double by 2015. More recently, Washington and Colorado have decriminalized small amounts of recreational marijuana. In 2004, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a policy statement that expressed concern about potential abuse of marijuana among adolescents in the context of decriminalization. There has been some evidence of medical marijuana being diverted to adolescents and recent reports of marijuana exposure to younger children. Studies suggest that there has been a slight increase in symptomatic, unintentional marijuana exposures since 2009. “Most of these exposures were from medical marijuana, which was often packaged as food products,” explains George S. Wang, MD, FAAP. “As such, it’s important to examine the effect that decriminalizing marijuana has had on children.” Assessing Trends in Marijuana Exposure In a study from Annals of Emergency Medicine, Dr. Wang and colleagues compared trends in unintentional marijuana exposures to children up to the age of 9 as measured by call volumes that were reported to U.S. poison centers. The authors hypothesized that decriminalized and transitional states would experience greater increases in call volume and have more symptomatic exposures and healthcare admissions than non-legal states. “States that decriminalized marijuana had significant increases in...